Savvy users who opt to install Joli OS as a secondary operating system to complement their existing Windows 7 installation will find that booting into the thin client is so fast that they’ve already logged on, fired off an email, and moved on with their lives in the time it would take for Windows 7 to load to its boot screen. Setting up your PC to dual-boot into Windows 7 and Joli OS couldn’t be easier, with the whole process taking no more than 45 minutes and a single download. Here’s how it’s done.

With the exception of a few yahoos, when most of us think about searching the web, we’re thinking about Google. While Mountain View may be able to fulfill the bulk of our search-related needs, there’s no harm in mixing it up a bit. When looking for an alternative to Google, you could do a lot worse than giving Bing a try. While only a few years old, Microsoft’s upstart information-seeking darling has managed to incorporate a number of user-friendly features into the service’s already impressive set of capabilities. Care to give Bing a spin? We’ve put together 10 of our favorite Bing tips for you to trick out your browsing experience with.

I have an average-size spare bedroom that mostly functions as a home office and gaming room, and has been used primarily by me. Given the cramped quarters of San Francisco apartments, I set out to make the room less me-centric and more family-friendly by transforming this home office into a home office theater. The goal was to create a room suitable for three things: normal PC computing, big-screen surround sound movie viewing with no reconfiguration needed, and big-screen gaming. Ancillary goals were to make the room feel less like a cluttered man cave, and to avoid breaking the bank.

So you want to be a video star? You’ll have to work on your gaming skills first—you wouldn’t want to disappoint your future legions of YouTube fans with a 0-64 record in StarCraft II.

Wait, what? Videogame streaming (and commentary) is a huge deal nowadays, and it’s a lot easier to get in on the action than you might think. And don’t forget bragging rights: Wouldn’t you want to show all of your friends just how well you can wield a zergling? Or a portal gun? Or a desert bus adventure?

In the previous how-to, we discussed multiple monitors as a great tool for increased efficiency. However, sometimes multiple displays just don’t work in a certain environment. Fortunately, there’s still a way to get some of the efficiency benefits of having multiple desktops without needing two displays: virtual desktops.

A laptop is a lot of things—it’s a mobile entertainment center, a portal to the web, and a way to get work done away from home. More than anything, though, it’s a freakin’-expensive piece of hardware that you absolutely do not want to lose.

Of course, the best way to keep your laptop is to not get it stolen in the first place. But if you do, you can be prepared to try and track it down.

Were there a Mount Everest of PC builds, the see-through PC would likely be it. The difficulties are great, and the possibilities for failure high, but there’s nothing that gets me more excited than the opportunity to crack my knuckles and customize the lighting and electrical setup of a transparent desktop system.

Running multiple monitors has become something of a necessity for serious PC users. You don’t have to take it to the sort of extremes we do in this month’s display challenge, but anything less than two monitors is risking serious damage to your nerd cred.

Unfortunately, running multiple monitors can make it difficult to keep your desktops looking nice with custom wallpapers. Here's how you can run multiple wallpapers, without bloating your system with extra software.

They say that the kids don’t use email that much these days. Doesn’t that sound dreamy? We adults, unfortunately, have no such luxury. For better or for worse, email is a major part of our personal and work lives.

We’re tempted to just leave it at that. But there’s no need to feel hopeless. We took a good, long look at the center of our communication universe with an eye toward improving, upgrading, and (hopefully) dominating it. The fruits of our labor are in the following pages. Enjoy! (Or maybe we should say, suffer less?)

From Windows 95 right on through to Windows 7, the Start Menu has always been just a wee bit short of perfection when it comes to increasing your productivity. Fortunately, Launchy has been helping Windows users get back up to speed since 2007. For those of you not familiar with this fabulous, free utility, Launchy is a Start Menu alternative that provides you with wicked fast access to every file, bookmark and program on your PC using nothing more than a few keystrokes. Once you’ve installed it and bent Launchy to your will, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.